40 Unbelievable Things That Actually Happened In Airports

Being in airports is often humdrum, even stressful. Indeed, they’re typically places where no one wants to be – although they’re usually unavoidable if you have to catch a plane. Sometimes, though, extraordinary things happen in airports. Take the following 40 incidents, for example…

40. Someone tried to transport 18 severed heads

U.S. Customs officers at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport seized a truly grisly cargo of 18 decapitated heads in 2013. But don’t worry: no gruesome crimes had been committed to obtain them. Sent from Italy, the items in question were in fact part of a medical shipment bound for a research center. Officials ultimately confiscated the heads at the airport due to improper paperwork.

39. A tiger cub was found in a suitcase

During 2010, a woman traveling from Thailand tried to smuggle a tiger cub in her suitcase, with the 12-week-old animal cub drugged and packed alongside soft toys. It was speculated that she had been intending to sell the cub as an exotic pet in Iran, where it may have earned her the equivalent of around $3,000 as a black-market purchase.

38. A bag label caused a major incident

In April 2018 a bag marked “Bomb to Brisbane” caused Australia’s Brisbane Airport to shut down. However, it was all an innocent misunderstanding. “Bomb” in this context refers to Bombay, the old name for Mumbai in India, from where both the bag and its owner, 65-year-old Venkata Lakshmi, had been traveling.